Chapter Four
“Did you plan to sneak away without us knowing?” David’s mother exclaimed, her hands planted on her hips. The moment they finished breakfast, she’d leaped up to clear the table, chatting about all she had to do. She hadn’t taken his protest well. “Of course we must make it a special day!”
“But, Mamm . . .” Making the move to Onkel Hiram’s house yesterday hadn’t been possible. He’d attended worship with his parents, sitting close to the ministers as he was required to do, and not stayed for the fellowship meal. He’d assumed his mother would guess he intended to go today.
His father grinned at him from behind her back. “You’ve provided another excuse for a get-together. The women had such fun Saturday, they want to have more fun.”
Judith whirled to reprove her husband, but he only laughed and held up his hands. “Isn’t that the truth?”
After an obvious fight with herself, she pressed her lips together. “Is it wrong to rejoice when we can spend time with people we love?” Turning back to her son, she appeared woebegone. “Do you really want to leave your home again without us making anything of it?”
What could he say after that?
“Of course not.” He hugged her, lifting her off her feet for a minute. “I love you, Mamm.”
“You know how much we love you,” she whispered.
He’d always known that he was loved even when he seemed a misfit in his family.
She added, “It’s sorry I am that—”
David shook his head. “Jake is protecting his family, that’s all. I understand.”
Stubbornly, his mother said, “He isn’t taking Bishop Amos’s word that you’re repentant.”
“You know the bishop thinks I need time before I kneel before the congregation,” he said reasonably. “He says I don’t need to be under the full meidung, not that I have been accepted fully into the church. Jake has spoken kindly to me. That’s enough.”
In six years, his younger brother had gone from being a gangly youth not so far past his rumspringa, still overcoming a stutter and acne that made him painfully self-conscious, to a bearded man who worked hard, had married, and had kinder to guide and love. Did he resent his big brother for causing their parents such grief, then leaving him to fill the vacancy? Knowing David had run off to become an auslander would have made it even worse.
David was discovering how many thoughts he still had that were contrary to the beliefs that were his bedrock. Since coming home barely over a week ago, he had begun to wonder how solid his faith really had been as a young man. The tedious work of farming wasn’t all he’d contended with. He’d been so restless, felt trapped inside his own skin sometimes.
Making a success of the business he and Levi partnered in had been too important to him, but that was because he had found something he both enjoyed doing and was good at. He’d been curious about the outside world in a way few Amish were, too. Not wanting to experience it himself, no, or so he would have told anyone, but bringing home books he took care to hide from his parents. Perhaps his decision to leave the Amish had been predestined, once he lost both his best friend and the work he enjoyed. And, ja, knowing his love for a woman who would never return his feelings was hopeless . . .
He shook his head and mentally crossed out the word predestined. That truly was contrary to his faith. Every choice he’d made was on him, as Englischers he knew put it. Most of all, the careless—or deliberate—act that had led to Levi’s death.
Everything he felt on homecoming was more complex than his parents could understand.
So, for their sake, he said now, “I look forward to meeting Jake’s kinder, but there’s plenty of time for that.” He paused. “After all, none of them are old enough to be put to work scraping peeling paint or swinging a hammer.”
His mother scolded him while he and his daad laughed.
Daad went out with him to help him harness the excitable, ill-trained young horse that had been running free in the pasture all week. Of course, David had had no chance to hold any training sessions. That left him to believe he would have better control of the near three-year-old in harness and between the shafts rather than trailing the buggy, secured only by a lead rope. It was Dexter, instead, who would follow behind. When Mamm and Daad came midday with mountains of food, they’d also deliver Onkel Hiram’s placid brown mare, Nellie.
After turning onto the two-lane rural road from his parents’ place, David discovered that traffic was unexpectedly heavy. He took consolation in knowing he wouldn’t be going more than two miles, but the road lacked shoulders, while ditches to each side prevented him from moving out of the way of passing vehicles. Normally, he scarcely noticed. Dexter or any other well-trained buggy horse would continue trotting while giving no more than cursory notice—perhaps a flick of an ear—at anything from a car to a full-throated motorcycle swinging around them. It was true that even today, most vehicles slowed and passed safely, the drivers locals who saw horse-drawn buggies all the time.
The danger and the irritant were the tourists, who tended to race up too close behind him and then gape as they swerved around the buggy. Normally, he made a habit of lowering his head and hiding his face beneath the brim of his hat. Today, all his attention had to be on maintaining control of this narrisch horse—ja, crazy was the right word—that tried to break into a canter and pull the buggy in a zigzag down the middle of the road, occasionally bucking and shying at every passing car.
Poor Dexter was yanked along behind.
David had worked up a good sweat by the time he turned up his own lane, leaving behind one of those big SUVs with windows rolled down so children could stare and passengers could use their cell phones to take his picture. Grateful when that last vehicle whooshed away to seek other plain people, he made the mistake of relaxing the reins.
Maybe only because of high spirits or because he really was off in his head, the horse bucked again, his rear, steel-shod hooves glancing off the front of the fiberglass buggy. Exasperated, David might have used a few fluche words his mamm wouldn’t like and even threatened to send for the schinnerhannes—the man who hauled away dead animals—as he employed all his skill to encourage the brainless youngster to resume his trot.
No, David decided, the blame was his. He’d let himself feel complacent. The young gelding hadn’t protested the harness or collar, but otherwise David would need to start him at a fundamental level, beginning with poles and no cart. Perhaps he could find someone to assist him by providing noises and distraction as they worked in a field or yet-to-be-built arena.
Thanking God that man and both horses had arrived uninjured, David pulled the young one up right in front of the barn, spoke gently to him while unharnessing him, and led him into a stall. He tossed hay in the manger before going back out to where Dexter waited patiently.
Trusting him not to attempt to break out, David turned the older horse loose in the overgrown pasture. Then he squatted to examine the scrapes and dents flying hooves had put into the fiberglass front panel of his buggy, shook his head, and pulled the buggy into the barn.
At the crunch of buggy wheels on the hard-packed dirt and gravel of the driveway, he emerged from the depths of the barn. He hadn’t expected anyone this early. The harness horse was a handsome, high-stepping black gelding he didn’t recognize but admired. He waited until it came to a stop.
If not for seeing him at the barn raising and from a distance at the church service, he wouldn’t have recognized the driver, either. Luke Bowman was several years older than he was. They’d been at school together for a short time but separated by so many grades, they’d had little interaction.
Blue-eyed, wearing a short beard, Luke was a big man, even taller than David, who still towered over most Amishmen. He climbed out of his buggy with a friendly smile.
“Daad thought you could use some help rebuilding your chicken coop. I volunteered.”
“Isn’t the furniture store open today?”
“No, we close on Sunday and Monday every week.” He hesitated. “I think Daad intends to come over later, but I wanted a chance to talk to you alone. You may have been told that I was away from the faith for thirteen years. I went to college, worked with computers, became more of an auslander than I was Amish, so I thought. Coming home was right for me, but not always easy. Still not always easy,” he admitted. “It seemed to me you might need someone to talk to who would understand.”
Moved, David said, “You were right. Denke. I was just realizing how much my mind works in ways I must change. I want to put all my faith in God, but I waver.”
Luke nodded, not appearing surprised or disapproving. “I have that problem, too. Out there, I wanted to fit in, talk like everyone else. I became ambitious, turning my back on many of the dictates of our faith. I had sex with Englisch women—”
“Did you confess that to Bishop Amos?” David asked with interest.
Luke grinned. “Not something I like to remember.”
David’s mind boggled at that. But honesty deserved equal honesty from him. “I don’t know what people are saying, but I started going to bars with fellows I worked with. I didn’t even like the taste of beer at the beginning.” What a foolish boy he’d been, so easily led because he was wild to find something to counter the factory work that made him as crazy as the young horse, as eager to act out. “I got drunk one time. A fight broke out. A man slugged me, so I slugged him back. I hurt him bad enough, the police arrested me, and I was convicted of assault. I served nine months in the county jail.”
Luke’s eyebrows had climbed. “As confessions go, I think that might be worse.”
David took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, cut Englischer short. “Amos wasn’t as shocked as I thought he’d be.”
“I noticed that. It got me wondering what he knows about our brethren that we don’t.”
Startled into a laugh, David said, “I hadn’t thought of that. Huh. Now I won’t be able to help doing the same.”
Luke slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Can you use help this morning?”
“I can.”
Luke unharnessed his handsome gelding—Charlie, he called him—and turned him in to pasture with Dexter. Too bad Charlie was gelded. He would have made a fine stud.
The two horses wandered toward each other, touched noses, and were soon grazing side by side. Luke took a tool belt from the buggy, buckled it on, and followed David to the barn.
The men collected lumber from a pile left by Hiram and carried it out to where David had already torn down the remnants of the existing chicken coop.
“I have to have chickens,” he said, “but I remember how much I hated collecting the eggs and cleaning the coop.”
“I feel the same. Julia and I still haven’t started a flock. We depend too much on my mamm and daad, maybe, but with her working, too, we’ve made changes slowly.” He glanced at David. “I don’t know if you’ve heard that she was Englisch.”
Even as the men talked, they laid out the basic structure and began to work.
“Mamm told me in a letter,” David agreed. “It was big news, her converting and your marriage.”
Luke nodded, obviously unsurprised. Lacking e-mail, social media, and phone calls, the Amish were excellent correspondents. The women in particular stayed in close contact with dozens of friends and family members in other parts of the state and country.
“Once I was baptized, working with Daad, and owned my own home, I planned to get married. That came next, you see. Buy house, get married. I was determined to catch up to the men who’d never left the way I did.”
David finished sawing a board and then set it down, waiting.
“I couldn’t find an Amish woman who felt right. It didn’t take me long to realize that a big part of me was still the man who’d lived a very different life. I never wavered in believing I’d made the right choice in coming home, but it took me a long time to accept that I couldn’t pretend those years hadn’t happened. A good Amishwoman would never have understood me. I would have had to hide a part of myself from her.”
Nailing together a corner of the structure, David thought about what Luke had said. “Julia understands all of you.”
“Ja. New to our faith, she stumbles, and I understand, as she accepts the worldly part of me.”
“I’m . . . not thinking about marriage yet, although I have no doubt my mother will start prodding me.”
Luke chuckled. “Mine never let up. Even Daad pushed. I think they kept being afraid I’d leave again. Marriage would tie me here with big knots, they were convinced. Your parents may feel the same.”
“I was less happy and successful than you were out there,” David said after a minute, “but the reasons I left, the things I shouldn’t have felt, they’re still with me. I want to believe I can let them go with confession, but I’m not sure.”
Luke straightened to meet David’s eyes. “That’s what I want to say. It won’t happen overnight. Don’t expect to find peace so easily, however important it is that you kneel to confess and receive forgiveness. I beat myself up when I didn’t meet my expectations. I hope you won’t do that. Accept that you are not the man you were when you left. You never will be again.”
David blinked at the blunt statement. He didn’t want to be that tormented young man again—but he had imagined that he could patch himself back together in the near future. Work hard, become an accepted part of the community, quit thinking about what couldn’t be changed.
Some of that was happening, but the weight of guilt had become heavier, if anything, now that he’d seen Miriam and Esther. Perhaps he should only hope that the load lightened gradually.
After a moment, he said, “Denke for saying that. I’ve been unrealistic. It will help if I don’t get mad at myself for stumbling, as you put it.”
Luke smiled. “I hope we can become friends. You and I have more in common than I do with many of my old friends.”
“That would be good,” David said readily. “I look forward to meeting your wife. I hear you have a little girl, too.”
“I do, and we hope to have other kinder. You’ll meet my daughter today, since Abby is with Mamm, who plans to come with plenty of food. Miriam, too. She won’t admit her cookies are better than anyone else’s, but even Amos says they are.”
David laughed, though he wished Miriam had been busy with her job today. Probably the quilt shop closed for the same two days as Bowman’s did. On worship Sundays, he could keep his distance from her, but when she was here, in his own home, radiating warmth, somehow more vivid than other young women as she had always been to him, he couldn’t conspicuously ignore her.
Very well, then, he must think of her as a friend and use as an excuse the limitations put on unmarried women and men who were not courting. That ought to be safe enough.
He did take heart from what Luke had told him. Nothing stayed the same. With time, he might discover his feelings had changed. Luke Bowman was right, David decided. He wasn’t the person he’d been, even if he still had to take responsibility for the failings of his younger self.
Judith Miller stood with her hands on her hips. “We brought folding tables, but nothing to sit on because Hiram had some benches. I hope they’re still in the barn. I should try to find Isaac or your daad to get them.”
“I’ll find Daad,” Miriam said. “Or go look myself.”
“Now, don’t you try to carry them!”
She made a noncommittal noise and circled the house toward the big barn with a silo behind it. Carrying one end of a long wooden bench wasn’t beyond her capabilities. Judith was as bad as her own mother, both worrying too much. Wanting to protect all their kinder, when that wasn’t always possible.
Halfway to the barn, she saw the frame and roof of a new chicken coop had been erected, some cubbies already built and installed. A large roll of chicken wire lay on the ground. Daad, Isaac Miller, and her brother Luke stood in a semicircle discussing what still needed to be done and whether it could be finished this afternoon.
Just then, David appeared in the open doorway of the barn, so she kept walking. When she got close enough, she said, “Mamm has sent me to search for some wooden benches she’s sure Hiram kept. Have you seen them?”
He held a glass canning jar full of those U-shaped nails, she saw. “I did notice them and wondered what they were for. I meant to say something, in case they got left off the bench wagon by accident the last time my onkel hosted worship.”
“No, we have some like them, too. Do you mind helping me get them? They’ll certain sure need cleaning.”
He glanced toward the other men as if meaning to call out to them, but seemed to change his mind. He set down the jar and led the way into the shadowy interior of the barn. A dart of movement above caught her attention. A swallow, making agitated circles among the rafters. She must have a nest up there.
A chestnut horse poked his head out of a stall and nickered. Miriam diverted to pet him and murmur, “I’m sorry I don’t have a treat for you.”
“Watch that he doesn’t bite you.” David came to her side. “I don’t know if he got knocked in the head when he was a colt or just doesn’t have any sense.”
She laughed at him. “Don’t young men kick up their heels and act crazy for a while?”
A smile relaxed his face. “And young women don’t?”
“Fewer of us, maybe.”
“That’s probably true,” he agreed. He touched her shoulder. “This way.”
They found the long backless benches stacked in a corner. “I should get Daad,” David said suddenly. “These are too heavy for you.”
Her chin came up. “Nonsense. I’m strong.”
“Have to prove yourself, do you?” It sounded like teasing, and his nod came almost immediately. “Let me get the top one down. Best if you get out of the way.”
Despite his warning, she stabilized one end while he lowered the other to the barn floor, then came to take the weight from her. He shook his head. “Levi used to say—”
She froze inside and out. What had Levi told David? Oh, why had she imagined she wanted to reminisce about Levi with this man who had been his best friend? And, ja, she’d considered that doing so might open old wounds for him. What she hadn’t considered was the possibility that she’d be the one ending up sliced to the bone.
But he was smiling. “Agasinish was the word I heard most often when he mentioned you.” It meant both “stubborn” and “contrary.” “You were so small, always smiling and gentle, I wondered what he was talking about. But now I see.”
Although light-headed with relief, she summoned an impish grin. “I know when I’m right, that’s all. Now, we should get going, before my mother sends out a search party.”
He laughed. “I’ll take the front, you the back. No, don’t argue.”
She chose not to, deciding to let him take the awkward end.
Of course, they’d no sooner emerged from the barn than the other men saw them. Within seconds, her daad seized her end from her.
He frowned. “Why didn’t you tell us you needed help?”
Miriam backed away. “Didn’t I help you load the wagon with furniture just the other day?”
“There wasn’t anyone else to do it. Today, you don’t need to.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “We’ll need another one. I’ll show Luke and Isaac where they are.”
“Good idea,” David said gravely, then winked at her.
She floated in an odd little bubble of delight back into the barn.